Information Director 2000 AGM Report

Information Director -- 2000 AGM Report

by Kevin Miller

2000 was my sixth year on the Board Of Directors of Triathlon Manitoba, and it was my third year as Information Director. As documented on our Staff & Board website page (http://www.triathlon.mb.ca/staff_and_board.htm), my committee duties for 2000 were:

Chair of the Information & Communication Committee
Chair of the Technical -- Timing and Results Committee
A member of the Development Committee under David Markham

I will comment on the work I did on these three committees in subsequent sections of this report.

I have recently thoroughly re-read the Triathlon Manitoba Business Plan -- 2000-2001 ("Game Plan"). To assist Laurel in her evaluation of the Game Plan, on my paper copy I penciled a "K" beside all "major tasks" that I contributed to in some way during the last year. Most of my "K"s are in the Athlete Grassroots Development section, but I also contributed to some tasks in the Athlete Elite Development, Coaches Development, Officials Development, Facilities & Equipment, Organizational, and Administrative Support sections. After reading the ~60 pages in chapter 2 ("Current Status and Goals and Objectives of Triathlon Manitoba') of the Game Plan, I observe that:

it is thorough, honest, accurate, and achievable.
Directors, Staff, and Volunteers have performed most of the identified tasks while meeting most of the goals and objectives in most of the sections. We should be proud of our achievements.

Information & Communication Committee

As Chair of this committee, my duties can be broken down into four sub-areas:

Race Line
Website
Newsletter
Miscellaneous information tasks

Committee members were Mitch Kolbuck, Carina Rondeau, Sandy Klassen, and Anita Miller.

Race Line

This was the sixth year that I administered it. For five months each year (May to September), my second phone line serves as Triathlon Manitoba's Race Line. Nothing about it changed for 2000, and its importance is lessened because of our website, but the Race Line was a very valuable tool in June when the severe rains affected both the Triple Threat Triathlon and the Schools Triathlon --- many people received "up to the minute" information about those two events from the Race Line.

Website

My Information Director -- 1999 AGM Report went into great detail about my re-development of our website, and also about goals for our website. I won't repeat that information here because my goals remain the same, and we were just as successful meeting the goals this year as last year. However, I will repeat one paragraph:

"Website technology is rapidly changing. The average website is re-developed every two years, but I would prefer that ours evolve over time. During 1999, I introduced new features throughout the summer. This will continue as I take the time to learn more about website development, and think of new features to add. A priority over the next few months is to work with our Race Directors and Dave Walker (a professional Website Developer, and a Triathlon Manitoba member) to develop facilities for leaflet production."

Comments:

Our website did evolve somewhat in 2000.
- I introduced a consistent "purple/fuschia" color scheme.
- I added hyperlinks in the Recent updates section of the homepage.
- I added a Upcoming events section on the homepage.
- New pages were added as required.
- Our Administrative Assistant, Anita Miller, was trained to do website updates, and she ended up doing approximately 35% of all website updates.
We purchased Adobe software, and Anita and I learned how to use it to create PDF documents. We used PDF for Race Leaflets and other documents that must look good and be efficient both online and on paper. Thanks to Dave Walker and Joel Remis for their help with Adobe.
We continued to maintain the website almost daily. "Accurate, relevant, and up-to-date information" continues to be our website's strongest attribute. This takes a lot of effort, but the many positive comments that we have received about this from our members definitely makes it all worthwhile.
We introduced a "TriMB e-mail contact list" that we use to communicate upcoming events and other important information to our members. The list currently has over 300 e-mail addresses, and we used the list approximately ten times between late April and late August. Many "thanks for the info" replies were received, and only five people asked to be removed from the list.
Our website saved us even more money in 2000 because even more people have internet access, and we moved more administrative communications onto the website or the "TriMB e-mail contact list". We will save even more money in 2001 because we will contact our membership when the Spring Newsletter is posted to the website, and only mail printed copies to those members who do not have an e-mail address or who explicitly request that we mail them a printed copy.

In summary, the Triathlon Manitoba website continues to serve our membership very well, it continues to evolve, and an increasing percentage of its maintenace has been taken over by Triathlon Manitoba staff (Anita).

Newsletter

Newsletter Editor Carina Rondeau and I communicated throughout the year about stories and information for the newsletter and for the website. Also note the point about e-mailing versus mailing the newsletter in 2001 which I discussed earlier in this report.

Miscellaneous information tasks

I calculated Grand Prix, Sprint, and Duathlon race series points again this year.
I have consulted with and provided data to Laurel, David, Marc, and others on an ad-hoc basis.
I managed all of the data for the Junior Development Team.

Technical -- Timing and Results Committee

I was the Chair of this committee, and Committee members were Sandy Klassen, Cherrie Fournier, and Anita Miller. I e-mailed Cherrie and Sandy a few times during the season to keep them informed of happenings or ask for their opinions. The most formal of these e-mails was one entitled "Technical -- Timing and Results Committee: status update on May 11th".

After two transition years for race timing and results, 2000 was essentially a "business as usual" year. However, with today's technology, "business as usual" implies evolutionary change. My Information Director -- 1999 AGM Report stated:

"Throughout the season, I suggested RaceTime software updates to increase productivity (save us time) and improve functionality. Monica Godar also suggested an update. Peter Chernis implemented all of our requests for no charge. We progressed from RaceTime V3.2A to V3.2H during the season. RaceTime (now called Race Wizard) V4.0 has just been rewritten as a 32-bit application under Access 97. It has new features and runs faster, but requires more memory than our notebook computer's 16MB. Stay tuned"

The memory in the Triathlon Manitoba notebook computer was increased to 64MB at a cost of approximately $135. The computer's effective performance doubled as a result.
We upgraded to Race Wizard V4.0C in the early spring, and, by the time that our season started, Peter had released V4.1B as a result of the extensive testing that Anita and I had done. Anita updated our Triathlon Race Results user guide to reflect the user-interface and functionality changes in V4.1B . We used that version of Race Wizard at thirteen events this season, and it performed flawlessly. At Prestige Duathlon #1, the minor problem with timing occurred because of an inexperienced person using a Sprint 8 watch. At the Riding Mountain Triathlon, the problem with results was caused by a human error, and Peter has made a Race Wizard fix to prevent that mistake in the future. Anita is currently testing Race Wizard V4.2D, which also contains changes and new features suggested by Michelle Barnet.

I again communicated with all Race Directors a few weeks prior to their events in order to facilitate a "timing and results plan" for their event.

The Race Director's staff took complete ownership of timing and results at only one race (Morden).
At St Malo, Sandman, and Essex Road, the Race Director's staff did all the pre-race work with Race Wizard, but "contracted" Anita to coordinate timing and results during the race.
At four races, Anita was "contracted" to handle all aspects of timing and results.
At four Tuesday Night races, Anita was the Assistant Race Director, so of course she handled all aspects of timing and results.
At the Manitoba Games, Anita and I were accreditated triathlon officials who received a room and meals (and a great experience) for handling timing and results.
All other events were handled "manually" (with watches and paper & pencil) because they were either very small, unique, or Kids of Steel. Triathlon Manitoba staff are responsible for KoS events, so either Anita, Laurel, or Jaclyn (who had a brief work term with us and also worked for the Manitoba Games) handled timing and results.
At the vast majority of the events that used Race Wizard, I was the Technical Support person, but I only had an active role at Southport and the Schools Tri (where I didn't race), Riding Mountain (where we had a problem), and the Manitoba Games. Cherrie was the Technical Support person at St Malo and Essex Road.

My use of the word "contracted" in the previous points means that our familiy usually received free race fees or some other benefit from the Race Director for Anita's work. It is important to differentiate Anita's job as Triathlon Manitoba staff (where she works for her salary) versus her being a volunteer (where she agrees/"contracts" to provide a service to a Race Director). This "contract" arrangement was a win-win for both the Race Director (for many reasons) and us, but the problems at Riding Mountain made me aware of just how stressful the arrangement was for Anita --- plus she never gets to see her kids race. Therefore, in 2001, we will be making a greater effort to train other people in the use of Race Wizard, so that Anita can have the opportunity to enjoy the occasional race as a spectator or minor volunteer. I will continue to ensure that a qualified Technical Support person is available at every race in case hardware or software problems occur.

Sandy Klassen worked as a raceday "timing" volunteer at most of our races. She was in high demand because of her knowledge and experience. I believe that she too would like to work a few less races next year. Although it is important to have knowledable people using the TimeTech Sprint 8 watches, I think that it might be advantageous to have Sandy do less timing and more results next year. If she's willing, Anita can give her a few training sessions over the winter.

I'd also like to thank the handful of other regular raceday timing volunteers who ensured that things went well at every race. In particular, Laurel, Jaclyn, and Sandy Briscoe worked the Sprint 8 watches at many races.

Development Committee / Junior Development Team

I again did a lot of work on the Development Committee under David, particularly with the Junior Development Team.

I facilitated and discussed some ideas with David, Shawna, and Monica.
I was continually informing Junior Development Team members of various info (many Email mailouts).
I purchased, overhauled and maintained, and distributed (loaned) bikes and wetsuits to Junior Development Team members ("thanks" to Glenn Campbell for some assistance with this). We now have thirteen bikes and four wetsuits. All Team members again had adequate equipment this year.
I contributed in many other ways --- as I mentioned in my opening of this report, I've simply pencil-highlighted "tasks" in the Game Plan for Laurel to use when evaluating the 2000 Game Plan..

This page was last updated on October 10, 2000